


One Less Perfect Life

by burglebezzlement



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Arguably one spoiler for S11, Bar, Episode: s02e20 What Is and What Should Never Be, Extra Treat, F/M, Missed Opportunities, Set during S11 but does not require knowledge of S11
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-31
Updated: 2016-10-31
Packaged: 2018-08-21 19:19:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 996
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8257403
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/burglebezzlement/pseuds/burglebezzlement
Summary: Dean Winchester walks into a bar.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [wicked_wyvern](https://archiveofourown.org/users/wicked_wyvern/gifts).



> Happy Trick or Treat!

The bar's next door to their hotel, and it's upscale. Fancy name. Makes Dean feel like he's out of place, like he should be wearing his Fed suit instead of his flannel and jeans. There's a wide wood bar, carved fancy, and a fire burning in a fireplace in the corner, driving away the chill from outside.

He's here because they chased a chupacabra into a resort community in the high desert. It's cold out — winter — and Dean's taking the opportunity to get plastered at the only open bar in town while Sammy runs down some research, makes some calls. 

He's three beers in and not feeling it yet when she walks through the door.

Snub nose, broad cheekbones, dark eyes. She's shorter than him, Latina, with a friendly look and — he knows her from somewhere. Doesn't he?

She's with a friend who peels off to say hi to someone else. 

When she comes up beside Dean at the bar to order, he waits for the bartender to get her drink before he says anything. 

"I know you, don't I?"

Her face clouds over. "No. I don't think so."

"No," he says, "I'm sure I —"

And then he remembers where he knows her from. _When_ he knows her from.

Realizes that he doesn't know her at all.

When he breaks off, her face softens a little. "I used to model. I get that a lot. Don't tell me, you drink El Sol?"

"Sometimes," Dean says. He hasn't been able to look at the label the same way since the djinn. Since the glimpse into his fucked-up fairy tale. 

She shakes her head, takes a sip from her glass. He figured her for a girly drinker, but she ordered whiskey, neat. "I guess there's worse things in life than being that girl from the beer ad."

"Maybe," Dean says. He thinks about the mess the chupacabra left of its last victim. _Definitely_.

"So what brings you up here?" she asks. 

He looks at her face while he thinks about an answer. She looks a little older — a little wiser, maybe. She's got lines around her eyes that she didn't have in the djinn's world. 

"Work," he says, a little too late. "Long story."

She looks over at her friend, who's still talking to some guy by the fireplace. "So? It looks like I've got time."

"I could tell you another story," he says, instead of trying to invent an explanation for why he's in town.

She raises an eyebrow. "Yeah?"

"It's where I know you from," he says, and he knows it's dumb, but hell, she's not going to believe him, is she?

He still remembers everything. Almost ten years on, he's been through Hell — literally — and Purgatory, and Heaven. Had his insides ripped out. Taken on the Mark of Cain. He's being hunted by God's sister, the Darkness, and yet he still remembers that djinn. Still remembers the smell of cut grass while he mowed Mary Winchester's lawn. 

Still remembers going to sleep with his girlfriend Carmen wrapped around him.

"It, uh." He tips back his beer, nods to the bartender for another one. "I got trapped by a genie, and you were my wish."

Her face goes blank and she starts to turn away. He puts his hands out. "No, not like that. Just... my life hasn't always been — look, it's stupid."

"A genie," she says. Not impressed, but she's not running away.

"Yeah." The bartender slides another beer across the bar, and Dean takes a sip, buying time. "I guess I saw an ad with you in it, and when the genie caught me, it got wrapped into the dream. He made the perfect life for me. Mom, my little brother — you..." He trails off. 

She runs a finger along the rim of her glass. "So what, that's your perfect world? Your family and me?" 

"Something like that." He looks away. Thinks about telling her that his mom's been dead a while, but he doesn't like talking about that.

"So what was I, in this genie-fantasy of yours?"

"Nurse," he says. She raises an eyebrow and he shakes his head. "No, not like that."

"And you?"

"Auto mechanic." He takes another pull from the beer. "We had a place. It was nice."

She looks him up and down, like she's measuring him, and suddenly he wonders what he was thinking, sharing that much with a stranger.   _Shit_. He's expecting her to turn into a shifter, maybe for her eyes to black out, demon-style, or turn into Amara, or —

None of it happens. Instead, she throws back her head and laughs. It's a snorty laugh, a human laugh, not the perfect laugh she had in the Djinn's fairytale world.

"That's a good one," she says. "If they gave an award out for creative pickup lines, you'd be winning the line of the night."

"Yeah," he says, and he smiles at her, like it was just a line.

"So what's your name?" she asks.

"Dean," he says.

She smiles at him. "I have to go, but here. A pickup line that bad deserves something." She scrawls her number on a bar napkin, and then drinks the rest of her whiskey. Not pounding it back, but several sips, like she's tasting it.

Dean takes the napkin. "I didn't get your name," he says.

"Carmen," she says. Smiles again. She sets the glass back on the bar. "Nice meeting you, Dean. Maybe we can meet up sometime and discuss that genie of yours."

She heads back over to her friend before Dean can say anything.

Carmen. Shit. So the djinn got that right. Dean finds himself wondering. _What if_. 

He holds on to the number, until he doesn't. Because what are the odds of anything working out for him? Of Dean Winchester, happy and safe and settled down?

Dean figures there's about as much chance of that happening as there is of Mary Winchester coming back to life.


End file.
